Tagged: ashton-court
Bedminster, Ashton, Ashton Court sunset walk
12 Dec 2020
A walk with Sarah focusing on Ashton and the surrounds, taken on a day with really nice light around sunset. Just what I needed.
Shops, Hedgehogs and Cows
06 Jul 2021
I really only took the GPS and camera on a "just in case" basis, as I knew I was only going for a coffee in Greville Smyth Park along a well-trodden path this lunchtime. Still, I saw a few new things along the way, so I figured it was worth uploading the handful of photos I took...
Dead centre of this picture is a herd of cows, though I imagine you'd be hard pressed to find them once this picture is shrunk down a bit for the web. They were more obvious to my naked eye, wandering around on the hill. You don't often see cows from town.
I thought that was part of Ashton Court's Red Deer Park, but perhaps they're diversifying...
Of course, in the old days you'd have seen plenty of cattle near here in the city. Just behind the Pump House were the cattle sheds and an abattoir that used to stand where the Rownham Mead housing development is now. You can see them in one of the pictures on the City Docks website, here.
A Door, a Square, a Few Night Shots
04 Dec 2021
I didn't take many pictures on this quite long wander, partly because Lisa and I wandered across to Bedminster via Bower Ashton, which I've snapped quite a lot of on the last couple of walks, and also because we lost the light fairly quickly, though spending a half-hour drinking mulled wine in the Ashton might have had a little to do with that...
Before we left Hotwells I wanted to visit a door I'd heard about on Cornwallis Crescent and also take a little look at a couple of houses in Dowry Square to consider the 1960s regeneration of Hotwells.
Site of a manor house since the 11th Century. Last time I was in there it was also with Lisa, my companion for this walk, as a team of storytellers from Red Rope Theatre read us ghost stories just before Halloween. It was excellent.
A Random New Year's Day Wander
01 Jan 2022
I picked a fairly arbitrary reason for a wander today. Really, I just wanted to do a New Year's Day wander just to get out of the house and to set a precedent for the year to come.
My ostensible reason was to investigate what looked like a road on my map that quartered the lawn in front of the Ashton Court mansion. As it turned out, this is just a muddy footpath/desire line similar to a half-dozen other tracks nearby, and must be some kind of bug or misclassification with the mapping system I'm using, but that's not important. What's important is that I went for a little walk on the first day of the year. As a bonus, I did happen to wander down a couple of sections of new footpath, so technically I broke some new ground too, which is nice.
...and this is the Kennel Lodge itself. Presumably you'd want to keep your hounds a fair distance from the house just to keep the racket out of earshot.
Which seems a bit odd, given that it's not in Hotwells wouldn't really lead there in either direction. Looks like a fairly modern development; maybe it's just one of those roads where the developers picked a roughly local name of out a hat.
This sounded like a fragment of poetry to me. All Of Ending Bicycles, perhaps a work by Keats?
Though this isn't the allegedly main-ish road I was trying to find, so I didn't pop through it.
This bit that's marked on my map in the same style as a normal, tarmac road. Clearly it's not. I think perhaps I need to figure out what's going on with the mapping on this website, as the main openstreetmap site, which is where I'm getting my data from, does seem to have it as a simple track.
A small challenge for the new year, I suppose... Perhaps a refresh of the way the map looks on the site would be a nice start to the year anyway!
Ticking Off a Pocket of Paths in Leigh Woods
03 Jun 2022
I managed to go for a wander a while ago that was meant to finish off a little tangle of paths in Leigh Woods, or at the very least finish off my wandering of the Purple Path there. And I managed to miss doing either of those things through some kind of navigational incompetence.
Today I woke up with a bit of a headache, feeling a bit knackered as soon as I dragged myself out of bed, but at least with the energy to realise that I'd be better off (a) going for a walk in what looked likely to be the last of the Jubilee weekend sunshine than (b) moping around the flat until it started raining, at which point I could mope more thoroughly.
I had a look at my map, considered going to Ashton Court, but remembered that there was a music festival there today, and instead found these little leftovers of Leigh Woods and decided to have one more try at walking them.
While my main target is Leigh Woods, I do also want to nip into Ashton Court and walk a little path I missed last time I was in the field with the little steam railway in it, so to the gatehouse we cross...
There was actually a gatekeeper today, as it's the weekend of the Love Saves the Day festival, being held at Ashton Court for the first time this year, I think. Happily, as long as you just want to walk a stretch of the grounds away from the festival site, they just wave you in. I wanted to walk a footpath behind the railway track I walked past back in...gosh! November 2020. I've been doing this a while, haven't I?
Guessing this is a polite hint from the golf club. In my mind's eye I can see an irate greenkeeper chasing a couple of mountain bikers in his golf buggy.
To the left is the edge of the golf course. I'm looking to wander along the edge and the behind the railway, which is behind those trees.
I think I'm pretty much a mile away from my house right here. Nice of someone to erect a marker.
Time to exit Ashton Court and head for my main target at Leigh Woods.
A Quick Swing Past Ashton Court
05 Jun 2022
Another day not dissimilar to my last wander: I'm feeling a bit tired and rather than just moping around the house I thought I'd find some tiny bit of somewhere that I'd not yet walked and get outdoors. This time I headed for the Tobacco Factory Market in Bedminster, as I often do, but went the long way around via Ashton Court Mansion as I knew there were some footpaths and a small section of road I'd not ticked off up there. Finishing all the Ashton Court footpaths will be quite a long job, but you've got to start somewhere...
I did feel rather better by the time I got home, and, pretty much astoundingly given the weather forecast, managed to avoid the rain completely.
Ah, so not only is it the Bristol Triathlon next weekend, but it's also the UWE degree show. That's usually worth a look-see. Mind you, it's also Clifton Open Gardens, so maybe I'll see what the weather's like before I make a choice. UWE's Bower Ashton campus can be absolutely sweltering on a warm day, from what I remember, so I might be better off sipping Pimms in a garden if it's too sunny.
I like the sound of "Flax Bourton". I keep on meaning to dust off my bike; maybe a trip along there would be an interesting day trip. Might want to make sure I can still ride comfortably before I try a ten-mile round trip, though...
Hard to do this tree justice, as it was both wider and taller than the widest angle of my camera, and any further back the fence gets in the way.
Of course, if I'd brought a full-frame camera with a wide-angle lens, this is exactly the moment when a peregrine falcon would land on a branch at the same time a magnificent stag wandered past in the middle distance. You never have the right lens...
I do enjoy the bits of my walks where I can look back and see Hotwells, or at least the higher bits surrounding Hotwells.
Well, it's giant, it's got a definite red hue and it's made of wood. I wonder what it could be...
A batch of giant redwood seeds arrived at the Veitch nursery in Exeter in 1855, and the Smythe family bought quite a few of them, apparently. Many of the sequoia around Bristol date from around then, including the lovely tree in Paradise Bottom in Leigh Woods, which would then have been Leigh Court's arboretum.
Alan Barber, late campaigner for public parks and green spaces, helped design this rose garden at Ashton Court, and it was dedicated to him in 2008.
Trasparenza, by Andrea Greenlees, originally built for Burning Man in 2016. It has transparent benches inside, but it looked a bit of a tight squeeze, so I left the children of the family that arrived a couple of minutes later to it. They seemed to enjoy exploring. There's a view from the inside on Andrea's Instagram.
I mostly went out to hang out with my friends Sarah and Vik in Bedminster, but along the way I thought I'd take a closer look at something a little nearer home: the last crossing point of the Rownham Ferry.
Inflating in the field behind Ashton Court mansion, by the looks of it, the usual venue for the Balloon Fiesta.